


"please come back"

by escapismandsharpobjects



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: "please come back", Emotional Hurt/Comfort, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Pre-Slash, lawsuit era, my summary sucks ass sorry, this is pretty soft i think in the grand scheme of my writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29167542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapismandsharpobjects/pseuds/escapismandsharpobjects
Summary: febuwhump day 2: "please come back" (alt prompt no.10). during the lawsuit, eddie shows up at buck's doorstep, slightly drunk and completely forgetting that they can't see each other.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 88





	"please come back"

**Author's Note:**

> heyo! this is not very like. whumpy. but it has got plenty of emotional h/c. hope u enjoy :)

Eddie’s drunk. Not mind-numbingly, not enough to make any  _ seriously  _ bad decisions, but drunk enough to be...inhibited. He’s alone. Chris is at the Wilsons’ for a sleepover. Shannon is gone. Buck is...where  _ is _ Buck? 

_ At home, _ his brain supplies.  _ Not quite, _ he thinks. There’s something else...something which is completely escaping him at the moment. 

Whatever that something is, he figures, it’s nothing that would keep them apart. He laughs at himself for even thinking that. As though anything would ever keep them apart! And seeing as there’s nothing separating them save for distance, he decides to call Buck and see whether he wants to hang out. 

His phone rings and rings and rings, then goes to voicemail. He pulls it away from his ear, looking at the screen to make sure he’d hit the right contact, even as Buck’s recorded voice comes through the speaker. “This is Buck, I’m not here right now…” 

Maybe he’s busy. His hands might be full, Eddie figures. He’ll call back in a minute. 

Thirty seconds later, the phone is ringing again. And ringing, and ringing…

“This is Buck, I’m not here right now…”

Eddie sighs, hanging up. Buck  _ always  _ answers. Some nagging thing in the back of his mind says that there is a reason Buck isn’t answering, but he ignores it. What if something’s wrong? What if Buck needs him? (What if he needs Buck?)

He’s too drunk to drive, but that’s okay. A walk will do him good, he thinks, maybe sober him up a little so he’s not falling over on Buck’s doorstep. 

Halfway through his walk, the thought occurs to him that he could’ve gotten an Uber. It’s started to rain, heavy drops falling through the dark sky. No point in calling one now, Eddie figures. He’s already wet. He walks a little faster. 

He arrives at the door of Buck’s apartment soaked and slightly shivering, despite the warm night. He feels a bit less drunk, though still out of it, and the nagging feeling of there being something up with Buck returns to his mind. He knocks, leaning against the doorframe, wondering for the first time whether this wasn’t a stupid idea. Maybe Buck’s out for the night. Maybe he has someone over (the thought barely crosses his mind before he’s dismissing it, for reasons he doesn’t entirely understand). But he’s here now, and he thinks it would be more stupid to not at least knock. 

He knocks, and waits. Footsteps approach the door, which he slumps against in relief. Buck’s home. His mind begins to formulate more what-ifs and why’s, but he’s stopped from thinking through them by the door opening. 

He half falls over as the door swings open, catching himself with a hand against the doorframe. He looks up, and smiles. Buck’s here. 

But he looks… _ angry _ isn’t the right word, though it’s one that comes to mind. Confused, maybe. Surprised. Definitely not glad to see him. 

“What are you doing here?” Buck asks, and he sounds almost accusatory. Eddie flinches back reflexively.

“Wanted t’ see you,” he says, the slightly slurred words slipping out of his mouth before he can think of anything better to say. 

“Eddie, you  _ can’t,” _ Buck says, sounding a little worried now. Eddie doesn’t like that. The last thing he wants is for Buck to worry. 

“Why?” he asks. 

“Are you drunk?” Buck asks, and now there is no mistaking the worry. “Eddie, you can’t be here. The lawsuit?”

And  _ shit. _ He  _ does  _ remember now. His whole body shivers with the sudden realization, and he turns to leave, nearly tripping over his own feet, turning his face to the ground to hide the tears forming in his eyes. 

An arm around his bicep stops him in his tracks. Before he can ask “what’re you doing?” Buck is dragging him inside and closing the door, then walking away towards the stairs, leaving Eddie dripping water onto the kitchen floor.

He stares after Buck, blinking the tears out of his eyes, thoughts racing through his mind as quickly as they can. He’s at Buck’s. Buck is mad at him. They are not supposed to see each other. He is drunk enough to have forgotten that fact. He’d  _ forgotten. _ How had he forgotten that he wasn’t allowed to see his best friend?  _ Why  _ had Buck decided to do this stupid lawsuit anyway? Why had Buck even let him into his house?

Eddie is jolted out of his rapidly spiraling thoughts by Buck throwing a towel and some clothes (his own clothes, he recognizes, left over from the last time a Buckley-Diaz movie night had turned into a Buckley-Diaz sleepover) at him, a little harder than is necessary. He wordlessly points to the bathroom. Eddie hurries off towards it before Buck can change his mind and kick him out.

Once in the bathroom, Eddie barely restrains himself from sinking down to the floor against the door. He shouldn’t be here. Buck  _ clearly  _ doesn’t want him here, even if he’s letting him stay. He looks down at the clothes in his hands, brings them up to his face. They smell like Buck. He smiles reflexively, then begins the slow process of stripping out of his soaked clothes, drying off, and putting on the dry ones. 

Once he finishes that task, Eddie feels slightly more steady, slightly less drunk, and a hell of a lot more embarrassed. He’d come here on pure instinct, too out of it to realize that he wasn’t wanted, and now he’s in Buck’s bathroom wearing his own clothes that smell like  _ Buck,  _ who is in the same apartment as him but might as well be a thousand miles away. 

He briefly debates just staying in the bathroom forever. Buck is  _ going  _ to kick him out, and then he’ll have to go home alone in the pouring rain, and everything will be exactly the same and he’d  _ still  _ miss Buck even though he’s _ right there… _

“Eddie?” There’s a knock at the door.

“Coming,” Eddie says quietly, dropping his wet clothes into Buck’s laundry hamper in the vain hope that, later, Buck will wash them and ask Eddie to come back over and get them. 

He opens the door. Buck is standing there, the ghost of a smile on his face, his hands wrapped around a steaming mug (Eddie’s favorite mug, he notices, and tries not to notice that he’s noticed).

Buck hands the mug to Eddie, who wraps his lightly trembling hands around it. It’s hot chocolate, Eddie realizes, the kind Buck sometimes makes for Chris on chilly days. The thought almost makes him smile, were it not for the fact that he feels like crying. 

“Come sit down,” Buck says, and walks to the couch before Eddie can say anything in response. He follows numbly, focusing on the warmth of the mug slowly seeping into his hands.

A moment later, the two of them are settled into their usual spots on the couch, and Eddie is staring into the mug of hot chocolate so that he doesn’t have to look at Buck. So that Buck can’t see the emotions that he knows are written clearly across his face. He  _ really  _ wishes he felt a little less drunk, a little more in control.

“What were you doing, coming here in the rain half-drunk when we’re not supposed to see each other?” Buck asks, and he sounds genuinely concerned, rather than angry. Eddie relaxes minutely, risks a glance at the other man.

“I didn’t think,” he says, honestly, hating the way his voice nearly breaks. “I knew there was something...something I was forgetting, about you, but I couldn’t think of what it was. I was drunk and alone and I wanted to see you.”

He’d usually never be this honest about this kind of thing. He’s half-glad to finally speak his feelings aloud, half-mortified of the truth that’s come out of him. The glad, drunk part of him wins out over the mortified, sober part, and before he knows it, he’s talking again.

“I wanted to see you,” he repeats, hopping back onto his train of thought, ignoring the way his voice  _ definitely  _ breaks. “I missed you. I miss you so much, but you’re right here. You’re  _ right here _ and I can’t even  _ see  _ you and I miss you  _ so much _ and I don’t want you to leave, not after Shannon- after she left, and I just want to be around you again.  _ Please  _ come back, Buck.”

_ “Eddie,” _ says Buck, and his voice is soft, softer than Eddie deserves for being  _ here, _ for being  _ weak, _ for telling him all of that…

A soft hand brushes under his eyes. He hadn’t even realized that he was crying. Now that his attention‘s been drawn to it, though, he can’t seem to stop. A broken sob escapes him, and suddenly Buck’s arms are around him, warm and comforting, and Buck is speaking softly into his hair.

“I never wanted to leave, Eds. I was...I was angry and hurting and I thought that this would fix my problems. I didn’t know how far it would go. Maybe I should have, I dunno. But I didn’t think. All I want is to get my job back, get my family back. I  _ want  _ to come back, to the 118, to  _ you,  _ Eddie. That’s all this has ever been about. Please believe me. I  _ never  _ wanted to leave you.”

Eddie sniffs, burying his face deeper into Buck’s shoulder. “I believe you,” he whispers, his voice scratchy and quiet. “‘M sorry.”

_ “I’m  _ sorry, Eddie,” Buck says. “I was hurt, but I didn’t think about how much this might hurt you too.”

Eddie nods into the fabric of Buck’s shirt, taking a deep breath. He pulls away from Buck’s arms, dragging a hand down his tear-streaked face.  _ God, he’s exhausted. _

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Eddie says, almost laughing. Almost laughing with his best friend, who is  _ right here _ and  _ not upset with him _ and  _ not leaving him _ and -

“Hey, hey, Eddie, what’s wrong?”

Eddie shrugs. “I missed you,” he says, not bothering to wipe his tears away this time.

“I missed you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> tysm for reading this!! let me know if you liked it? i will love u forever <3


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